]]>I remember 2001 like it was yesterday. I was working at TSN back then (behind-the-scenes in television rather than for their nascent website) and as the Raptors stellar Playoff run wore down there was as great a sense of panic as there was of jubilation about the summer that lay ahead.

On the plus side you had a team that had just completed their greatest-ever regular season with 47-wins and was embroiled in a tense back-and-forth Conference Semi-Finals series with the Philadelphia 76ers. The Raptors were headlined by one of the biggest stars in the NBA in Vince Carter and looked like an emerging Eastern Conference power based on their 2000-01 results.

There were rifts, however. The Raptors (and their fans) were still very much haunted by Tracy McGrady’s abandonment the summer before, when he spurned Toronto’s free agency overtures and signed a six-year, $67.5-million deal with the Orlando Magic. In 2001 Carter was eligible for a contract extension but no one was sure if he’d be willing to sign on for an elongated tour of duty in Toronto after his cousin’s recent departure. Plus, the team’s success had made Toronto’s bevy of free agents (headlined by Antonio Davis, Alvin Williams and Jerome Williams) attractive to opposing teams and many thought the roster was about to be decimated despite the team’s season-long success.

In the end, of course, Carter opted to stay, and general manager Glen Grunwald offered lucrative (some would argue recklessly so) new deals to Davis and the Williamses to avoid losing them and having to reconstruct the team’s rotation. Those new deals, however, handcuffed the Raptors financially, prevented them from having the flexibility needed to pivot when the roster proved vulnerable and ultimately led to enough fruitless years that Carter would demand a trade after playing out only two years of his six-year extension.

Hindsight proved cruel for Grunwald and his decisions that summer. In addition to the expensive new contracts to his existing players, he also signed a washed-up Hakeem Olajuwon to a three-year, $18-million contract that wound up buying the team just one year of inconsistent service before Olajuwon retired in 2002. Try as he might, Grunwald was never able to dig himself out of the financial hole that he created in the summer of 2001 and he was eventually relieved of his duties in 2004 after three seasons without a Playoff appearance.

Like I said, though, I remember that summer clearly, and how that summer is frequently remembered is not how that summer played out. Or at least the cold numbers don’t do justice to the big picture that was in play in 2001.

Remember, it was in March of 2001 that it was announced that the Vancouver Grizzlies would be relocated to Memphis, Tennessee. The Raptors success in the 2000-01 season was just three years removed from what to this day stands as the most desultory in team history, the 16-66 campaign of 1997-98 (the year that Damon Stoudamire demanded a trade out of town and the club brought in their third head coach in three seasons). Plus there was the aforementioned McGrady situation and Charles Oakley’s rumoured trade demand. The team had seen some very dark times prior to their successes that season and there was a strong belief that the Raptors could not afford to lose the momentum of the 2000-01 season. They could not afford to lose another superstar, they could not afford to backslide into irrelevance, they had to capitalize on their good fortune and keep the good times rolling lest they slide back into the dark times and all of the uncertainty that comes with such a fate.

Many thought that a return to the dark times was inevitable. Davis and Alvin Williams were strong candidates to be poached away from Toronto and the assumption was that if that happened Carter would be a lock to follow them out the door. Davis, in particular, was fervently pursued by the Orlando Magic and never seemed all that interested in staying in Toronto, while Williams was strongly courted by Chicago and Atlanta. So while the Raptors may have overpaid to re-sign them (Davis’ deal with worth $64-million over five years, Williams received seven-year, $42-million contract and Jerome Williams signed for seven years at $40.8-million), it wasn’t like there weren’t other suitors vying for their services and at the time for the Raptors to retain their own they had to overpay to make it happen.

I remember that there was legitimate shock when Davis and Alvin Williams decided to re-up in Toronto. It was a little bit of a validation moment, which was of course exaggerated when Carter and Olajuwon joined them later that summer. Toronto was becoming a real NBA team, an actual player on the NBA landscape. The New York Times called them one of the favourites to win the East. That was a big deal back in 2001, one that maybe outweighed danger inherent locking up so much long-term money in such a small core of players.

So why is all of this relevant in the summer of 2014, thirteen years after the fact and a generation removed from that summer? Because circumstances have put the Raptors back in the shoes of their 2001 counterparts, and Masai Ujiri is going to have to navigate many of the same waters that Grunwald did while hopefully improving upon his outcome.

In an attempt to create as much financial flexibility as possible in his first year on the job, Ujiri assembled a robust collection of expiring contracts that was supposed to give the Raptors a boatload of cap room to play with this summer and beyond. In an unexpected turn of events, however, that collection of players turned out to be a pretty good ball club. In these Playoffs, in fact, the three players with the highest PER are Patrick Patterson (18.9), Greivis Vasquez (18.7) and Kyle Lowry (16.0) — all free agents this summer. Plus, the next guy on the list, Amir Johnson (15.9), has only a partially-guaranteed contract for next season.

This puts Ujiri into a tight corner. Does he work to keep some the most productive elements of his roster together because they created such unexpected success this season, or does he roll the dice and only bring back a select few and risk upsetting the apple cart? Keep in mind that I am operating under the presumption that at least one player of relevance will probably also be traded at some point this off-season, if only because this team is ‘good’ and not ‘great’ and further upgrades need to occur if they want to take the next step forward and with so many free agents in play there aren’t a lot of meaningful contracts left for the team to deal.

The argument for keeping the band together is obvious: this team has just completed their most successful regular season ever and is in the midst of pushing the Brooklyn Nets harder than most expected (regardless of the series outcome). Plus, guys like Patterson, Vasquez and Johnson are just good players and great fits for this team’s core, not to mention Lowry as an absolutely indispensable asset that the club now simply cannot afford to lose.

The opposing argument is that, while good, this team still has a long way to go and they need to preserve a certain amount of flexibility because they’ll still need a massive talent infusion if they want to play at the level of the NBA’s best. Like in 2001, there are sentimental reasons for wanting to keep this train rolling along, but are those reasons the most pragmatic given the longterm goals and aspirations for this club?

Of course, this isn’t 2001 and the parallels between then and now are not endless. There isn’t the same stigma against Toronto as a free agent destination as there was back then. Sure, one could still be said to exist, but that concession has to come with caveat that that stigma is only a fraction of what it once was. Secondly, contracts are not as long or expensive as they once were, especially for role players, so there is still a chance the Raptors could afford to mostly keep this group together while still maintaining enough flexibility to improve as needed.

Still, there is a fascinating debate at the heart of this issue that will be addressed by Ujiri one way or another this summer. Does he believe that there is merit in maintaining a certain level of continuity, given the successes that the club has achieved this season, or does he buy into the notion that the team hasn’t actually achieved anything substantiative yet and nothing about this team’s current assemblage should be seen as precious. I would consider that to be an overly cynical view to take in light of how little success the Raptors have seen in their nineteen-season history, but if an NBA title is all that this club can measure success by then perhaps such cynicism is validated.

In his three years with Denver, Ujiri was not noted for his sentimentality. He would gush about a player one day and trade him the next. However, Denver did not possess the same psychic scars as Toronto. Breaking up this team, or allowing it to be broken up, will come with the expectation that much better times are on the horizon. Internally there may be the belief that the Raptors haven’t achieved anything yet, but there are thousands of fans who stand outside in the cold to watch their team play from outsidetheir arena that would disagree that nothing has been achieved. They may not be where they want the club to be yet, but they’ve struck a chord with the city and that means something, too.

In 2001, that meant that all stops had to be pulled out to keep the team together. It will be interesting to see what it means in the summer of 2014.

]]>http://www.raptorsrepublic.com/2014/04/29/summer-looming-raptors-2014-echoes-2001/feed/82Hakeem played hard when he was here, didn’t he?http://www.raptorsrepublic.com/2008/02/08/hakeem-played-hard-when-he-was-here-didnt-he/
http://www.raptorsrepublic.com/2008/02/08/hakeem-played-hard-when-he-was-here-didnt-he/#commentsFri, 08 Feb 2008 06:19:05 +0000http://arsenalist.com/?p=697I still can’t get over the Shaq trade, more specifically I can’t seem to look past Steve Kerr. When I see his scrawny little self standing next to Shaq on the podium welcoming the oft-injured, under-performing, overweight and declining center to Phoenix, I can’t help but get a flashback to him on those Bulls teams […]

]]>I still can’t get over the Shaq trade, more specifically I can’t seem to look past Steve Kerr. When I see his scrawny little self standing next to Shaq on the podium welcoming the oft-injured, under-performing, overweight and declining center to Phoenix, I can’t help but get a flashback to him on those Bulls teams where he stood all alone on the perimeter waiting for Jordan to create for him. Then I start thinking of Jordan punching him in practice and I think, man, this guy has some balls. And mind you it does take balls to pull a trade like this when you’ve got the best record in the NBA, but know deep down in your gut that it’s just not good enough. Give credit to Kerr for seeing right through the shallowness of Phoenix’s record and addressing an area that he knows that his team will be challenged in come the second season. He thought Phoenix was one step away from a championship and he’s made his move. Go Suns.

No such brave moves to report on the Raptors side of things, we’re still a middle of the pack team with a big hole to fill and nothing imminent on the horizon. Bryan Colangelo’s been silent for some time and the recent resurgence of Bargnani and the return of Ford has definitely changed the short-term outlook of this team. Assuming Bargnani’s performance doesn’t drop off again and TJ Ford can go back to his old ways, suddenly the need for a second scorer or a point guard doesn’t exist anymore, even the Ukic buyout can be second-guessed (unless it’s for trade purposes). But what all of the above doesn’t change is the need to tighten up the rebounding which ranges between poor and unacceptable. Nobody’s expecting Shaq-like trades but here’s hoping Juan Dixon has impressed enough people over the last few weeks that they’re willing to give up more than a second-rounder for him. Our most tradeable commodity after Calderon might be Jason Kapono who we don’t seem to have a need for anymore, I would think teams would come calling for him. I’m all for a trade but I pray we’re not one of the teams “lining up” for Mike Miller or Maggette.

The Clippers are in town and frankly writing a preview for a mid-season game isn’t my cup of tea, however RaptorsTalk goes deep and analyzes key matchups and other such stuff. Suffice to say that we need to contain Maggette and limit Kaman (which can be done by making him play D) and we’ll have a more than great shot at winning this one. And of course, we have to be wary of Sam. If we lose, expect a 2000 word post-game article. The line for the game stands at -10, let’s see how it moves until right before the game and if those “wise guys” make it fluctuate, bet your entire life savings on it.

If you’ve been on RealGM over the last week or so you might’ve seen this classless little bitch interview Sam I Am who stays ultra-cool the entire time. I like the Clippers, they’ve got some really hardcore fans that know the game. I’ll even go ahead and generalize by saying it’s a sharp contrast to Laker fans. Now I know you can’t judge a fanbase by celebrities but listening to some friends on the west coast I get the same feel. Next time the Raps are playing the Lakers or Clippers in LA, check out how many Clipper fans the mic picks up saying all kinds of shit to the bench. They’ve sucked for so long that even the slightest of successes gets them riled up, the Laker crowd on the other hand only starts cheering when they’re up by 8.

I was checking out Chris Bosh’s blog (which I love) and he’s soooooo a geek (which I also love):

For all of my fellow business people/geeks, I was reading that Microsoft has recently offered to purchased Yahoo for around 45 billion dollars…. WOW! With that type of purchase being talked about, it seems like Microsoft has some kind of plan to compete with the guys at Google. Microsoft is mostly known for software and spreadsheets, but now they have a major search engine to potentially work with. Microsoft, Apple and Google are the big names when it comes to computer and the internet. Each of the 3 corporations seem to be slowly tapping into each others market and/or competing against each other (microsoft’s purchase of yahoo [google], zune vs. IPOD, HTC touch vs. Iphone, leopard vs. vista, etc). Very interesting!

I don’t now what Hakeem is doing on this list and why the author thinks he “checked out” early and didn’t play hard. Hakeem never got over his injuries with the Raptors and just wasn’t the same player he used to be. Insinuating that he didn’t play hard or was only after the cheque is completely unfair, remember we begged him to come here, he wasn’t hunting for money. Also from TSN, we learn that TJ Ford is going to take it easy to which I say put him on the floor and make him go at Sam for 25 minutes so that he can start flushing the mental fear out of his head.